An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia.
Category Archive: Thomas Babington Macaulay
There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.
The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way of themselves?
The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature.
The English Bible – a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power.
There is surely no contradiction in saying that a certain section of the community may be quite competent to protect the persons and property of the rest, yet quite unfit to direct our opinions, or to superintend our private habits.
The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners.
As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.
There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.
He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.